8/28/2012
Ph 7.5
GH 180
KH 120
nitrite .5
nitrate 200
Phosphate 2.0
Ammonia 0
I removed and cleaned The other filter. The Marineland 350. Later today after the next water test, I will clean the Whisper EX70. If there is little or no more progress, I am thinking to add a 3rd Pura Filter Pad. Getting rid of the final 1.95 ppm of phosphate can take a long time and I wish to speed up the process.
Say you have 1000 gallons of water you want to filter and a filter that filters 100 gallons per hour. The first hour all the water being filtered is being filtered for the first time. In this example it's 10% of the entire 1000 gallons. In the second hour, 100 gallons gets filtered, but only 9% of the 1000 gallons of water is being filtered for the 1st time. In the 3rd hour, only ~8.1% of the water is being filtered for the 1st time. By the time 1000 gallons of water has gone through the filter, ~2% is being filtered for the first time.
So removing when ppm's at first you get a big part of it and the process slows to a crawl and when 25%-50% of the filtering power is being used, it's at a Malasian Trumpet Snails pace. And I got a good 700 gallons per hour being filtered.
But at least the nitrite level dropped...